Unusually Slow Boot Times With SSD

[Claude Brown]

So, I recently acquired a new 240GB SSD for my system, to replace my smaller 60GB SSD. Using my previous 60GB SSD, I experienced boot times of around 30 seconds. With my new 240GB SSD, however, I experience boot times in excess of 50 seconds. I am unsure as to why this is the case, as both are the same drive (just with different capacities). If anyone requires further information to help my situation then I will be happy to share it. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I have scoured several internet forums to no avail.

[ACK]

First of all I suppose that they are the same types of drives, because otherwise they may have different characteristics.

Then follow those steps.

Make sure you use the fastest SATA ports on your motherboard. If you have your old drive still plugged in swap their SATA ports on the motherboard.

Also make sure that your drive is recognized correctly in bios and that you are running the drive in AHCI mode (under storage settings), and then check that trim is enabled.

Also it would be helpful to know if you made a clean installation of your machine or if you just cloned your previous drive. A clean installation is always preferred.

Try a simple file transfer to confirm that the read and write speeds are different if not it is a windows installation issue.

If the speeds are different try to plug the drive on a different computer and run a test there as well to check if the speeds are consistent.

Try updating the firmware.

If the drive performs worse in all cases try formatting the drive.

If the problem persists and the speeds you are getting don't match the speeds that the drive says it runs then it may be a faulty drive.

[omglazrbms]

Did you plug them in in the same place on your motherboard? I'm unsure without knowing which MB you have, but most modern ones have 6 g/b AND 3 g/b and the old SSD might have been running on the faster 6 g/b port.

[Claude Brown]

That's a lot of questions, so here I go:

Yes, they are both Corsair Force Series 3 drives. The SSD is plugged in to the 6Gb/s, Intel, SATA port. The drive is running in AHCI mode and I'm assuming TRIM is enabled. I made a complete fresh installation of Windows 7 Home Premium, on my new drive. I just transferred 5GB on to my 60GB SSD from the 240GB version and Windows told me that the write speeds were, on average, 90MB/s which to me seems a little bit slow; as in the past, when I bench marked the drive, it recieved read and writes of around 250MB/s. I may update the firmware if most other options fail, but honestly it seems unnecessary.

[tbc]

run crystal disk mark and screenshot it for us. 3 x 100MB tests are fine. if you can show us the results for the 60GB drive as well, that'd be even better.

[Eric1024]

90MB/s is extremely slow for those drives. I would try updating the firmware, and if you're still getting such slow speeds, you might want to consider RMA'ing it /:

[MetalLobster]

This may sound trivial, but did you transfer one 5GB file or a folder with 5GB of content? I get faster transfer speeds when transferring one large file, say a .zip file, as oppose to a large folder with many directories.

. I may update the firmware if most other options fail' date=' but honestly it seems unnecessary. [/quote']

I would do it simply to narrow down the possibilities. Besides, I haven't heard of an SSD be slower after a firmware upgrade.

[killerx525]

Did you update to the latest chipset drivers?

[Money]

Ive heard that there's some drives that behave strangely on different boards. Such as the Corsair Neutron3 and the Maximus IV Extreme. It performs at half the speeds it does on other boards. Very strange. You may want to RMA it.

[Claude Brown]

I have the latest chip-set drivers and, just incase anyone needs this information, here are my system's specifications:

- i5 3570k 4.4GHz

- Asus P8Z77-V Pro

- AMD Radeon HD 7850

- Corsair Force Series 3 240GB (Boot Drive)

- Corsair HX650 Power Supply

[fardawg]

grab the newest firmware update for your ssd (if there is one) and also make sure your bios is up to date.

[killerx525]

Are those benchmarks from the Corsair SSD?

[Claude Brown]

How does one go about updating the SSD firmware? Yes, they are from my two Corsair Force Series 3 drives.

[christoi]

That's strange... looking at the benchmark values you posted, both drives appear to be severely underperforming and should be getting far better results. Write speeds seem to be fine with the 240GB drive, but it's extremely strange that read speeds are somehow capped at ~200MB/s. Even worse somehow, the 240GB drive should be outperforming the 60GB drive if anything, as shown with the results.

Although it's usually recommended to run off the chipset ports when possible, try using the extra two ports of that board - it seems like a problem with the motherboard to me, since the issue is present with both drives.

[Claude Brown]

Interesting; I never checked my speeds before as I assumed that a boot time of 30 seconds was to be expected from my drives. If not for my slow boot times with my recent SSD, I would not have checked to see whether my drives were performing correctly. Both my drives have been plugged in to my motherboard's Intel 6Gb/s ports. I will try plugging my drives, instead, into my Asmedia ports and re-run my previous tests, to determine whether there are problems with my motherboard.

[fardawg]

How does one go about updating the SSD firmware? Yes, they are from my two Corsair Force Series 3 drives.

grab the update on the site and then follow the instructions usually you will have to make a firmware update cd and you will have to boot to it and run the firmware update ....i would highly recommend backing up your system by making an image just in case something goes wrong.

[Claude Brown]

When plugging my drives, instead, into my Asmedia ports I saw no noticeable change. Does that mean it is my motherboard that's the problem or is it the drives themselves... surely both of them wouldn't be faulty? Also, whilst I'm here, what is the best way to go about updating your BIOS?

[Jay123]

I doubt it would that much difference but are you using AHCI or IDE and are you partitions aligned?

I fresh install of Windows might help.

[Claude Brown]

I'm using AHCI mode and is there a way to tell whether they're aligned? This is a fresh installation of Windows as it is. Repeating the process seems unnecessary, but If all else fails I may have to. Another thing to note: The boot times seem to be slow because it hangs, for ages, on the Asus 'splash screen'.

[bartekxx12]

The boot times seem to be slow because it hangs' date=' for ages, on the Asus 'splash screen'. [/quote']

It might be some weird BIOS setting holding you back, try turning off all the onboard stuff like networking adapters, USB and all that and if that speeds it up try turning them back on one by one to see what causes the issue.

Apart from that it looks like it's a motherboard issue, you're getting SATA 2 speeds with SATA3 ports, your sequential read should be like double that I believe.

[bartekxx12]

I'm not really familiar with that SSD though so i'm not exactly sure what speeds you should be getting but here is what google Images came up with

[Unspec]

I'm using AHCI mode and is there a way to tell whether they're aligned? This is a fresh installation of Windows as it is. Repeating the process seems unnecessary' date=' but If all else fails I may have to. Another thing to note: The boot times seem to be slow because it hangs, for ages, on the Asus 'splash screen'. [/quote']

If you're going to reinstall, make sure you secure erase the drive first. Otherwise, you'll get another performance hit when you install Windows 7.

Try updating the BIOS and checking that TRIM is enabled. What SSD firmware do you have? The one that comes with the SSD don't support TRIM.

[Jay123]

I'm using AHCI mode and is there a way to tell whether they're aligned? This is a fresh installation of Windows as it is. Repeating the process seems unnecessary' date=' but If all else fails I may have to. Another thing to note: The boot times seem to be slow because it hangs, for ages, on the Asus 'splash screen'. [/quote']

There is some software called something like Paragon Partition Aligner that can align partitions without afresh install, unfortunately I think it costs.

[Claude Brown]

What does 'secure erasing' entail, exactly?

[Claude Brown]

Don't worry, the internet told me what I needed to know. The loss in performance may have been due to me installing Windows several times on the drive; I was getting boot errors at first and then I realized that it may have been the other drive, that was currently installed, causing me problems. I will try a secure erase and then re-install Windows. Hopefully this will fix it. One thing to note: My computer, sometimes, turns itself on at night. Any ideas? I've already changed the 'scheduled updates' settings, but it has not worked. Again, thanks everyone for your time.